Given the harsh, fascistic dystopia in which EU supporters now find themselves, one might fully expect many of their number to feel depressed, hopeless, withdrawn and resigned to defeat. Not so, though. One woman is fighting back, through the medium of music. And her latest weapon is a cover of Mariah Carey’s classic, “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, reimagined as a wistful ode to the European Union.

The singer is one Madeleina Kay, an “an artist, writer, musician and social activist from Sheffield” who is “committed to using the arts to address important social and political issues and challenge destructive ingrained cultural attitudes”. Yes, she’s a Social Justice Warrior.

We’ll be generous and ignore the fact that the track Madeleina Kay hopes to make Christmas #1 sounds like a worn-out cassette recording of Zooey Deschanel’s inexplicably tone-deaf ghost playing on a battered Sony Walkman with dying batteries running at half speed deep underwater – let’s take a look at the lyrics:

I don’t want a lot for Christmas

There just one thing I need

I don’t care about the presents

In a country fuelled by greed

I just want for us to remain

Yeah, I want things to stay the same

Make my wish come true –

Baby all I want for Christmas is EU.

Because today’s generation of coddled, entitled millennials are actually profoundly conservative, inasmuch as they “want things to stay the same”, preserve and protect their own entitlements and value stability over opportunity.

And here is the customary allusion to the idea that Remainers voted in the EU referendum based on a high-minded, dispassionate review of the facts, basing their decision based on pure reason, while Brexiteers supposedly voted based on ignorant, racially-tinged superstition and emotion.

You and I may have blundered blindly into the voting booth, heads stuffed full of lies told by Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, but Madeleina Kay and her Remainer friends painstakingly considered every piece of available evidence, every testimonial and every possible angle (economic, diplomatic, political, cultural and historical) before deciding that the European Union is just super, and that Britain should remain a member state forever.

And Kay clearly hates the Evil Tor-ees so much (more on that later) that she would refuse a gift from Theresa May if one were offered. We are clearly dealing with a young lady of great wisdom and principle here.

I won’t ask for much this Christmas

I won’t even ask Jeremy Corbyn to go

I just want to share the love so

I’ll wait beneath the mistletoe

I won’t make a list of demands

To send to Boris Johnson or Saint Nick

I won’t even try to chase away

Nigel Farage with a large stick, oh

For the sake of peace I will fight

Until we have seen the light

What more can I do?

Baby all I want for Christmas is you.

Okay, so Madeleina is a trendy lefty, but not of the Corbynista variety. Good to know. And it is also encouraging to know that the songstress intends to wage unrelenting war in the cause of “peace” – the peace that only the EU can give.

Oh the red bus driving

Spreading lies everywhere

And the sound of NHS patients’

Crying fills the air

And everyone is doubting

The lies they kept on shouting

Santa won’t you bring me the things I really need?

Like compassion, tolerance, multiculturalism

And a fair democracy?

Obligatory reference to Our Blessed NHS (genuflect)? Check.

Because of course every single patient in the NHS is lying in their hospital bed, their kidney transplant utterly dependent on the instant £350 million windfall that we all totally believed would land in our laps the moment we voted for Brexit, weeping at having been so cruelly betrayed by Vote Leave. And again, the only lies uttered in this campaign were those told by the official Leave campaign. Remainers possessed a virtuous monopoly on truth at all times.

And who can argue with Kay’s assertion that compassion and tolerance have been sucked out of Britain ever since the EU referendum? Personally, as a Brexiteer I delight in witnessing the suffering of others and adding to it wherever possible, and am incredibly intolerant of dissenting viewpoints, seeking to squash free speech, shame and intimidate people into fearful silence – quite the opposite of enlightened Remainers.

I don’t want a lot for Christmas

This is all I’m asking for

All my European friends singing

Stille Nacht outside my door

Oh I just want for us to remain

Yeah, I want things to stay the same

Make my wish come true

Baby all I want for Christmas is you.

Well, at least Madeleina correctly recognises that Germany is the dominant force within the European Union, that community of (ahem) equals based purely on “friendship” and “cooperation”.

But it gets better. It turns out that Madeleina Kay is also a rather prolific cartoonist, expressing many of her stridently superficial pro-EU sentiments through numerous political cartoons. Much of her artwork seems to channel a bizarre Wizard of Oz obsession, in which EU supporters are portrayed as childlike innocents while any conservative or pro-independence politician is generally depicted as a snarling, fanged monster (Theresa May becomes the Wicked Witch of the West):

I am strangely drawn to Madeleina Kay’s art because it represents very simply and honestly the simplistic thinking of leftists and Remainers alike. When she draws winged demons snatching the “Future Opportunity”, “Life Chance” and “Hope” from helpless children, she reveals how leftists genuinely see the British people – as feeble lemmings in need of constant nurturing and support from government, utterly adrift when faced with separation from the European Union which seeks to be an auxiliary parent to us all.

So this is much less a criticism of Kay, and more an attack on the stunted, juvenile thinking of those politicians and commentators who frequently express in words the same ideas and sentiments that Madeleina renders in crayon. Kay, after all, is young and naive.

I myself was a drooling europhile in my student days only a decade ago, a committed euro-federalist with an EU flag adoring my university dorm room. Wider reading and real life experience eventually disabused me of these dangerous notions, and Madeleina Kay may yet go through a similar conversion and learn to put down the guitar and the Crayolas in pursuit of something more worthwhile.

Postscript: Now you can buy anti-Brexit Christmas cards designed by Madeleina Kay. An essential purchase for all virtue-signalling Remainers who don’t have the first clue what the EU is or how it works, but who need to show their friends that they are very much against leaving.

Madeleina Kay is clearly a very talented young lady, I wish her all the best and fully support her right of free speech. I obviously disagree with her and (yes this will, I’m sorry, sound patronizing) but suspect her understanding of the real EU is limited. Like most young remainers, her enthusiasm is rather belated. Indeed much of the anti-brexiteer reaction is less about genuine love for the EU (where was such ardent euro-patriotism even a year or two ago?) but a gut thing and epic virtue signalling. They imagine supporting Brexit is about racism, hating other nations and imposed by horrible stale conservatives who ‘as usual’ want to deprive young people of their fun. In other words, it is quite typical of lefty student politics for generations, and only the latest cause celebre. The problem for us is that some Brexit supporters do fit the above description, just not most of us. Most of us love European Culture and think Europe as a whole needs to be liberated from the EU (which is just the most recent, of a long list, of attempts at empire building, imposed on the free nations and regions of our beloved continent )

Well Samuel, nice to meet a Brexiteer who can parse and spell correctly and whose combined braincells exceed age by at least one. Mostly, I’ve become more used to the “You lost – get over it, dick’ line of argument.
Seriously, quite a cogent analysis of the view from ‘the other side of the hill’, even if sarcasm does seem to be the dominant trope here.
Remainers, like Leavers, come in all flavours and some of us voted Remain in the clear-eyed understanding that while the EU in its current form is, to quote George Monbiot, “s a festering cesspool of undue influence and opaque lobbying” that “by comparison with the British system, however, this noxious sewer is a crystal spring. Every stream of corporate effluent with which the EU poisons political life has a more malodorous counterpart in the UK”.
In short, Britons have been misled to blame the EU for shortcomings that are entirely the fault of Whitehall, Westminster and superyacht-collecting plutocrats like ‘Sir’ Philip Green, from lack of housing and hospital wards to the rise of the precariat and the race to the bottom of the jobs market.
Yes, we can do anger, too, but know where it should be directed.
What your essay doesn’t address, because it can’t, i suspect, are the inconvenient truths undermining the whole Brexit project, namely:
– The plethora of distortions, half truths and mendacities that underpinned the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign to the extent that ‘it’s written on the side of the bus’ has now become a political class quip meaning ‘downright lie’.
– The absence of any coherent vision or rationale as to how UK will actually benefit from being outside the EU thart isn’t based on misconception, delusion or wishful thinking.
– Any attempt to demonstrate a positive balance from the calcuation of costs vs. benefits involved in leaving
– Humble recognition that the referendum and outcome has been a trigger for a nasty upsurge in racist and ultra nationalist hate crimes that has seen a kind and conscientious MP and European workers murdered, shops and community centres smashed and foul outpourings of vile rhetoric.
– Toxic polarisation of politics between hard left and even harder right that has left us sensible folk in the middle feeling utterly betrayed and disenfranchised.
– A huge disconnect between the narrowness and unevenness of the referendum result and its translation into facts on the ground that threaten to split the UK apart, both geographically and culturally. This now feels like a country in a state of civil war and these exchanges remind me of the letters exchanged between Hopton and Waller.

I note that you say “I probably couldn’t begin to articulate my argument for why Britain should secede from the EU.” Well, why don’t you have a go anyway? I for one would like to read it. I’m still waiting for someone – anyone – to explain how or why this makes any sense at all.

And no, I won’t be buying the Christmas cards or the single because neither are my taste., Far more of a Billie Holiday/Ella Fitzgerald listener than a Maria Carey one.

But I do love the EU for all its faults and am proud to call myself a European citizen – far more proud than i am of being a British citizen right now, actually. It’s not treasonous to lament that one’s native country is now headed to a bad, bad, place when it was actually doing rather well before.

If you want his views, all you have to do is parse through his blog and give his other pieces on the campaign. I’ll give my two cents.

– The Vote Leave campaign was a bit of a disaster, and I didn’t get actively involved with it, although I’m fond of the MPs that were active in it (Rees-Mogg, Carswell, Gove, Johnson, Stuart). No argument there, although the fact that Remainers are so obsessed with the £350 million a day figure continues to baffle me. I don’t rage every day about the false remain promises of a recession by December, the nonsense of 3 million jobs being pinned to our membership, and the many more erratic claims made by individual members of the campaign (the EU army being a dangerous Eurosceptic fantasy a la Clegg, the Eurozone outgrowing the UK a la Kahn). That tends to be the one that’s mostly pointed out, what other misclaims annoyed you and have caused such mass horror in the aftermath of the vote? If it’s anything to you, I didn’t vote leave to continue to subsidize the NHS, and most opinion polls dictate the general public didn’t.

– For a coherent rationale as to why we’d be better off for leaving the EU, I’d suspect you probably didn’t do much looking outside of the rather narrow mainstream leave campaign. I’d know the same – I significantly underestimated the pro-European case for a long time before I began to read into their rational and arguments. Here’s two studies and cases that may better expand the opposing perspective:

These will also help give you a better idea of the coherent plan for how we should leave, and embrace the opportunities presented by adopting self-governance and an individual voice at the supra-national level. Getting more in touch with growth economies, abandoning the EU as the redundant middle man in terms of global development that it’s actually become, revitalizing parliament and our own democratic institutions, etc, etc.

– Perhaps you might want to stop peddling the myth that this has actually occurred. This is a straight up lie, already debunked by Assistant Chief Constable for the National Police Chiefs’ Council for Hate Crime Mark Hamilton that what we have witness is not an uptick of convictions, but reports. Well, surely this is bad in and of its own right, if people on the street are beginning to get active about this? Well firstly, if people were beginning to report and fight against hate crime more actively, this further draws the idea that Britain has now been swept with racialist sentiment into question, but secondly, this isn’t what’s happening. These have actually been reports all put together by a pro-European facebook group “True Vision”, who encourage their similarly pro-European followers to “find as many cases as possible”. As is why some of these cases have included phone calls to Nigel Farage. Actual prosecutions for hate crimes have dropped by 9.6% since last year, according to the Crown Prosecution Service.

– I’m completely on side in frustration that there has been an inability to find an air of unity in our politics in the aftermath of the vote, but this has been a rising force in politics over the decade. With a vote this decisive, do you think we would have united had the status quo become the victor my a margin of less than 5%? Trump was a thing in 2015, UKIP won a national election in 2014 – I can guarantee their support would have gone through the roof if remain had become the victor. Although equally, given that the Conservative Party looks set to win a landslide, taking over 40% of the popular vote in a field of five viable competitors for the national vote, there does seem to be some area of consent!

– This is an issue. The vote was heavily regionalised between North and South, with the four nations taking starkly different positions, and reigniting long-standing debates on secession, and as mentioned before, these are wounds that time will have to heal, and that would not have gone away regardless of the result. A Scottish secessionist party holds most all the Scottish seats in parliament, and they did that last year. But this result has not led to any resurgence in Scottish independence, or at least there has yet to be an opinion poll that would dictate Scotland would be willing to make this move.

I appreciate your concerns, and think you’re well placed to be concerned about it. If you want to buy an Irish passport and move to the continent, that is entirely your place to do so. But I think there’s movement to make, and opportunities to be had. OBR have already predicted that the UK’s economy will continue to grow, just at a lower estimate (2017’s estimate being 1.4% in total, with inflation topping 3%), with everything re inflation, wages and growth having recovered by 2019. Now we don’t know for sure what will happen – whether we hard Brexit, BETA, flexcit or some curious combination of the three, that is for the government to decide – but the key point to be made here is that looking to the future, deciding it’s all done for is as pointless as it is wrong. Let’s respect the result, but make it work for everyone, and there’s ways to do it. Or just get on with our lives as they are – the world keeps turning.

Blimey. Where do you start with this one? Joking aside I do feel you have addressed the difficulty Brexiteers have had in debates with younger generation remain supporters. There really is this notion that the EU is some pink and fluffy worker’s paradise. When you try to point out that the EU has almost 50% youth unemployment the response is anger rather than a desire to check if this is true. It is almost like dealing with the EU Stepford Wives.

I like your comparison to the Stepford Wives – that really does sum up the difficulty in trying to communicate with people who have been raised from an early age to view the EU as a kind, benevolent Font of All Good Things. To anybody who has read “The Great Deception”, the depiction of the EU as a magical land of unicorns and leprachauns is self-evidently laughable. But sadly many people simply believe the propaganda and do not make the slightest effort to learn for themselves.

And as you say, challenge their arguments and you are met with anger and denial rather than an open mind. Not good.

I do find it amusing that Tony Blair was trying to sell the euro-nationalists as the new insurgent anti-establishment movement, and the youth seem to be lapping it up. You kids are aware that your Prime Minister, Chancellor, leader of the opposition, Governor of the Bank of England and others opposed leaving the EU? They’ve adopted it because it’s trendy, and anything Tory is easy to hate, and all their biggest figures for hate supported leaving (Donald Trump, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage etc). Would be interesting to see if Jeremy Corbyn would also be receiving their scorn had he pulled for leave, as he clearly wanted to, and it would be interesting how they’d feel if Gove, Boris et al had pulled for remain. Many of the retarded headbangers at this stage are better off ignoring at this stage I think.

I am not so sure that young people are falling for Tony Blair’s lies. We sometimes forget that despite an entire life of EU brainwashing 35% of our young people supported leave. The kicker for Remain was that these 35% bothered to turn up to vote, they youth that supported Remain stayed at home and decided to rant about the result next day on Facebook.

Only one question really: were you born such a brainless div or did you have to work hard to become such an analysis free zone? There is not a single benefit to leaving the EU and empty phrase users like you keep proving the point. Criticism sans alternative. Thank God I have had 65 years on earth and met so few sad men such as you.

Actually I wasn’t born this way. I was a fervent euro-federalist until I reached university age and did some more reading and historical research of my own. Now, fortunately, my passions have moved away from an anachronistic, secretive dream of a federal Europe and toward the preservation and expansion of democracy and freedom (both anathema to the EU).

I find it hard to take people seriously when they say things like “there is not a single benefit to leaving the EU”. It shows that you have chosen to percolate in an ideological echo chamber surrounded by other similar people repeating the same mantras rather than actually trying to understand and engage with the opposition. At least I get the pro-European case, because I used to be one. You, by contrast, are very angry that I am a Brexiteer but probably couldn’t begin to articulate my argument for why Britain should secede from the EU.

Also, FYI, the way that blogs work is that the author doesn’t necessarily restate their entire case in every blog post. If you are really interested, you can filter my posts tagged “Brexit” and “EU Referendum” to get a sense of my views in detail. But you won’t, because you probably haven’t voluntarily read anything that contradicts your existing views since you were a child.

It certainly gave me nightmares. For some reason I can’t stop singing it, though – my wife gives me a death stare every time I get to “Like compassion, tolerance, multiculturalism and a fair de-mo-cra-ceeeeee”….

This blog is a great proponent of free speech, so I am more than happy to do what little I can to further raise your profile if it then means I then get to deconstruct and debunk your pro-EU worldview in front of a larger audience.

Best of luck with the song – and I did mean it when I said that it is better than that insipid “Bridge Over You” NHS song last Christmas.

Well everyone is entitled to their own views… That is what a “fair democracy” is about, after all! My Dad also approves, this was his response: “Sarcastic and articulate. Some Brexiteers have brains. ” And I, personally, would applaud anyone who stops Simon Cowell and his insipid X-factor monopoly from hitting the xmas no.1 spot… even if it was Mr Tumble singing the theme tune from Noddy!